This was one big football game … one very big football game. It wasn’t the Super Bowl or the Rose Bowl. And it wasn’t the Central Coast Section championship game.

But to those of us lucky enough to play in the annual Turkey Day rivalry between the Campbell Buccaneers and Los Gatos Wildcats, it was as big as any of them. Because this was more than just a football game–it was a community event. And it was played, of all times, on Thanksgiving Day.

It was the annual Campbell-Los Gatos Turkey Day Game. There were other high school football games played on Thanksgiving Day, and one–San Jose vs. Lincoln–that still is. But this one was the granddaddy of them all.

The rivalry began in the fall of 1934, and it spanned the next 44 seasons before ending once and for all with the unfortunate closure of Campbell High School.

The game was actually threatened prior to that by the advent of the CCS playoffs in 1972. Playoff-bound teams were forced to finish regular season play before Thanksgiving if they hoped to advance to the postseason. Campbell and Los Gatos chose to forego CCS play in the early years of the event in order to maintain their rivalry, but it would likely have been only a matter of time before the teams would have felt the pressure to join the playoff ranks.

The closure of Campbell, though, ended any speculation.

After the 1977 season, the rivalry was over. But what a magnificent run it was.

This was more than a game. Both communities turned out in force to support the local teams.

Cars decorated with red and blue streamers and balloons would caravan down Winchester each fall when the game was played at Los Gatos. And in alternate years, when the game was played at Campbell, it would be a caravan of cars sporting orange and black colors making the trip the other way down Winchester.

It was a game where the crowds were larger, the programs were thicker and the outcome was more important–regardless of the season records of the two clubs.

I can recall our coach at Los Gatos, Pete Denevi, expressing the significance of the game in his pre-game speech prior to the 1966 game.

“If you win today, you’ll go home to a Thanksgiving feast,” he said. “If you lose, you’ll be eating crow.”

Well, that certainly didn’t sound very good. Even though I’d never tasted crow before, I had a pretty good idea it wasn’t nearly as good as turkey.

Well, we went out and lost 25-0 to Campbell. Seems they had this guy named Chuck Hawthorne, and it seemed like he ran for 900 yards and 20 touchdowns that day. The score may belie those numbers … I’m just telling you how it seemed.

The turkey still tasted pretty good later that day. But I’ll bet it tasted even better in Campbell.

I grew up watching this local rivalry, and one of my earliest memories of the game was back in 1960 when Craig Morton led Campbell High to a win over the Wildcats. Morton was an outstanding quarterback who went on to play at UC-Berkeley, then for both the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos in Super Bowls.

That 1960 game was a classic. Fans filled the bleachers on both sides of the Campbell stadium, spilling out around the end zones and to about three deep on the sidelines.

While that crowd may have been bigger than most, large crowds were common at the Campbell-Los Gatos rivalry. Those who didn’t watch a game all season turned out for this one–students and parents, families from the communities and alumni returning home for the long holiday weekend.

I remember playing for Los Gatos in two Turkey Day games against Campbell– those games were turkeys, all right … we lost ’em both.

Then I remember watching a couple more Campbell-Los Gatos games as a graduate, and covering even more as a sportswriter before the tradition ended in 1977.

There was a definite excitement associated with this game, more than any other. It was an excitement certainly felt by those who played, but shared by just about everyone in the two neighboring communities. For Campbell and Los Gatos, this was the Super Bowl.

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